There’s been a lot of debate over whether this was a good decision, a bad decision or just a paranoid decision. (Not surprisingly) I’m leaning more toward the latter.

If you’re Forrester, the new policy probably sounded like a great idea for a few reasons:

• You’re able to share information from all Forrester analysts in one central place. You’ll even argue this makes things less confusing for clients and people looking to get Forrester opinion.
• The Forrester brand is put center stage, rather than individual personalities.
• When employees leave, Forrester gets to keep their blog and their audience. I imagine Forrester took quite a hit when people like Jeremiah and Charlene Li left the fold.

If I was a paranoid corporate person, I could understand what Forrester was thinking here. However, as a normal person (shut up), I think they missed the point a little. Actually, I think they missed it by a football field or so.

Here’s the deal: You can’t remove the “personal” from blogging because that’s what makes blogging work. People aren’t interested in companies. They’re interested in people and the characters these blogs create.

When Jeremiah Owyang and Charlene Li offered insight and free information on their personally-branded blogs, yes, they were establishing their own brands. But they were also building satellite Forrester communities on the Web. Communities that were interested in Forrester solely because of these personalities and the individual credibility they had built up.  When you attempt to take these stars and hide their brand inside a corporate marquee, you lose that authenticity and the spark that made them successful. You turn off their established audiences.

Essentially, you create the anti-blog. You also create a host of problems.

You Neuter Existing Talent

Sorry, gentlemen...

When you take an established blogger and move them over to a identity-less blog, you clip their wings and force them to surrender their voice. Even if that’s not your intention and even if the blogger says they are okay with the move.  You still risk losing the magic that made them who they are and their voice as strong as it was.   Because as a blogger, your voice is wrapped up on your identity and your audience. Mess with that and you mess with everything.

I don’t think Forrester wants to do this. I don’t think they’re looking to silence stars. I think they’re looking to better take advantage of their analysts celebrity and its own intellectual property, but this isn’t the way to do it.  Create a social media rule book for the company, but don’t attempt to shuffle blogs around. When you take someone’s name off their blog, you  change the blog and the blogger.  You risk making them less invested in its success. They feel less ownership of their words. They can’t talk to their audience with the same candor.  You may not think I have experience in much, but I have experience in this. The difference is night and day and it affects everything.

You also take away some of their power when you taint their audience’s trust. A super star writing on their own blog is authentic. A super star writing on a corporate blog is marketing.  You’ve just created suspicion because their words are being placed inside a corporate wrapper. [There's a good example of this down below.]

They Alienate Future Talent

This is going to be a big deal. With the new ban on personal blogs, Forrester risks shooting itself in the foot in a couple of different ways.

They deter established talent from joining by making them give up their own blogs and audience. I’d imagine that Forrester uses social media as a way to find strong new voices and talent. It’s going to be a hard sell to find new talent because of their blog and voice, and then promptly ask them to redirect it over to Forrester. It takes time and a heck of a lot of work to build an audience that trusts you and a blog that earns its cred. You’re gonna have a tough time getting new faces to give that up.

Forrester also throws away the power of new talent. Think about it. If you’re hiring someone based on their smarts and their influence, what sense does it make to attempt to rip that influence away from them? Whether they intend to or not, by taking someone off their personal blog and putting them on a corporately-wrapped blog, you diminish the value that they bring to your company.

Imagine if someone hired Rae away from Outspoken and then made her re-direct Sugarrae to a corporate site? [I use Rae in this example because (a) Rae’s the only Outspoken member with a strong personal blog (no offense, Rhea) and (b) the chances of Rae leaving us for a "real job" are as likely as the Colts getting that Super Bowl back.] Think about what the company would be losing out on making Rae to do that. They’d lose Rae’s “rae-ness”, they’d lose the built-in audience that’s followed Rae on that blog for years, and they’d risk tainting her authority.

Not everyone has been vocal against the new policy. Some seem to like it, employees even. For example, Forrester analyst Augie Ray has already shared his thoughts about having to move from Experience: The Blog to a company-branded blog. Shockingly, on the Forrester-branded blog Forrester employee Augie Ray says he’s okay with losing his blog and writing on Forrester. I’m not even trying to sound smart here, just to give a taste of the trust loss that occurs.  Do we really believe Augie is happy with the policy? Maybe we do and maybe we don’t, but either way, if he didn’t like it, would we know?

The new policy by Forrester makes me feel like they missed the point of this whole ‘blog’ thing by attempting to rip the personal from it to ‘protect their IP’. When Robert Scoble blogged for Microsoft no one “got confused” and forget where he worked because he was on a separate domain. Because he was on a different domain, people trusted his opinion more, it allowed him to speak a bit more freely (even if subconsciously) and it created a character for people to follow. That’s what successful blogs are based upon – the creation of characters that people become loyal to.

Trying to change that and create policies that limit the effectiveness of these characters makes you look like a paranoid company  trying to keep its stars and their ideas tied to the company. Its everything blogging is not. Plus, if you think banning personally-branded blogs is going to prevent employees from doing it, well, then you’re just silly. And once you start taking away personally-branded blogs, what’s next down that slippery slope? Twitter accounts? Facebook accounts? Feels it a bit like we’re going backwards trying to close everything up, doesn’t it?

I'll tie this in later. I promise.

Hey, guys. It’s Saturday. That means its time to check in and maybe share some laughs. How was your week? Get it all done? If not, no worries. That’s why God created the weekend. And Monday. At least I figure that’s why She created Monday. I surely haven’t found any other good use for it yet.

It was another busy week, but luckily there were lots of good reading nuggets to help get us through it. Here are some of the interesting links I stumbled across. If you have something you think people should hear about it, drop it in the comments. And yeah, you can promote your own stuff.  Self-promotion is the new black.

• A chorus of mad grandmas: What’s more intimidating than a gaggle of grandmas singing about corporate bullshit to the tune of Three Blind Mice? NOTHING, that’s what!
• First person Tetris:  No. You’re welcome.
• Physicists kill cancer with ‘nanobubbles’: While we love any story about killing cancer, ‘nanobubbles’ marks my greatest word find of the week.  The article says they work like little jackhammers, which pretty much makes them the cutest thing to happen to cancer since pink ribbons.
• Toyota’s new motto: Get it? Because their cars are being recalled! Ah, fun times, fun times.
• Turkish girl, 16, buried alive for talking to boys: Something to make you think.
• Sills, 13, Commits to USC: USC just signed a 13-year-old quarterback to their football team. If you listen really closely you can hear his underdeveloped body being broken in half by fully-grown 300lb men.
• Dog shoots hunter: Because simply biting would have been beneath him.
• When should a couple go ‘Facebook Official’?: My favorite link of the entire round up. Jamie Varon is my hero. [After the girl in question finished crying, she created this cartoon.]
• Puppy Starting Line-up: The big game is on this weekend and there’s just enough time to get acquainted with the starters. You don’t want to look like a fool when you can’t name the stars, do you? [I hear they'll be playing some football around the game, if you're into that.]

Okay, I’m done sharing. It’s your turn.

Yesterday Michael Arrington took to TechCrunch to post an apology to his readers. After an investigation, it was discovered that 17-year-old TechCrunch intern Daniel Brusilovsky accepted compensation (rumored to be in the form of a Macbook Air) in exchange for coverage about a startup. Because TechCrunch takes its editorial standards as seriously as they take colon cleansing, the intern was immediately terminated. Though it’s said that Daniel only accepted compensation one time, TechCrunch has gone ahead and deleted every post he published to the site. They’re all gone.

Or, said differently, TechCrunch is covering its ass while continuing to sell YOU out and to sell out every company Daniel wrote about that did NOT offer him a Macbook Air for his troubles. You can accept that or you can demand better.

Two things really irk me about yesterday’s drama.

Michael Arrington Sells Out His Community

Michael Arrington is responsible for the community over at TechCrunch the same way that I am responsible for the community at Outspoken. Is his job way harder than mine? Absolutely. However, that doesn’t mean the rules change. I have a responsibility to everyone who reads this blog to be as transparent as possible and to protect its (and your) integrity. And when something happens that affects YOU, I think it’s my job to not only handle the situation, but to be 100 percent upfront about what happened as I ask forgiveness. Arrington has, instead, chosen to protect his buddies. The rest of you can shove it.

Arrington offers a fake mea culpa while erasing evidence as to who the guilty company could be and offering readers no insight into where exactly they were mislead. To me, that’s dishonest. That’s Arrington deciding that his connections are more important than his readers. I don’t read TechCrunch, however if I did, I would have stopped after yesterday. I don’t need to invest time into a community more focused in protecting its backdoor buddies than being upfront with its audience. You shouldn’t either. That’s not what online communities should be based on.

Michael Arrington Sells Out 26 Other Startups

TechCrunch will not reveal the name of the company that gave Daniel the Macbook Air and deleted every post written by Daniel to make it harder to trace. However, the Internet does not forget. Over at 1938media, sleuthing commentor Kosso was able to look through the Google cache of TechCrunch posts written by Daniel and found the following companies received coverage:

• Appsfire
• PanelFly
• MacStories
• Palaran
• WooThemes
• Skribit
• Ning
• Isorocket
• DropBox
• TextPlus
• Graphic.ly
• Posterous
• Personera
• Rocketbox
• LinkedIn
• Owle
• Yazzem
• Apple
• Square
• BeamMe
• Vokle
• CubeTree
• TwitVid
• TokBox
• EtherPad
• Yammer
• Seesmic

One of these companies gave a 17-year-old kid (yes, he is a kid) a computer in exchange for TechCrunch coverage. And because Michael Arrington won’t tell us which it was, every company on that list is now called into question. They are all potentially guilty. All of these startups that are fighting for attention, for investors and for users have a light cast on them that they may have the ethics necessary to bribe a 17 year old. If I was on that list and innocent, I’d be furious. I’d be furious that TechCrunch was playing with my livelihood that way and would be up in arms for the site to publish that MY company was not associated with what happened. Instead, TechCrunch posted a silly Google story later in the day to try and take the heat off. Diversion Fail. The startups on that list deserve better.

Instead of protecting its readers, the big boys of tech are protecting each other. And Michael Arrington’s hoping you’re too stupid to notice. Of course, the name of the startup is going to come out. It always does. So, really, it’s everyone’s best interest to just give it up.

I’m not a TechCrunch lover, but I’m not a basher either. My issue comes as someone who manages communities for a living and places value in real transparency, not hail mary transparency. As part of that role you have a responsibility to both your audience and to the people that you write about to be as open and as ethical as you can. Because at the end of the day, all you and your brand have is your reputation and what you stand for. If you learn anything from this, it’s to be brave enough to stand for something more. Put your community first and when you mess up, whether it’s your fault or not, be up front about what happened. Protect the community and the people that have invested in you, not your secret handshake friends. Sad, Arrington.

Ah, I love my job.

I chatted with him for a while and tried to drive home the point that people ARE talking about your business, regardless of how big or small. Customers are taking to the streets of Twitter, Yelp, Facebook, and beyond to let people know how much they love or dislike you. Those conversations are out there and it often doesn’t take much more than a search for yourself or a competitor to see how you can take advantage to grow leads, better customer service and build your business. He then asked me a question that made me shut up for a second. I took it as a sign that maybe I was getting through to him.

He asked me if I preferred to do business with small businesses using social media over non-social companies. And if so, why?

The answer, quite obviously, is that I do. For a couple of reasons.

I’m treated better

Companies that are in social media understand the power of influencers. They understand that customers are not equal and that it’s in their best interest to factor that influence into how they deal with them. Jeremiah Owyang touched on this earlier in the week asking if companies should factor in social influence into total customer value and I think the answer to that question, is “hells yes”. Better yet, I think companies are starting to realize that this is something they’re going to need to do. How companies will be able to build resources to identify influencers and break them out from the pack remains to be seen, but it needs to be done. Perhaps being able to match receipts with faces ala services like FourSquare will help. Or maybe companies will dedicated resources to building a new Social Media Rolodex. However they decide to handle it, systems must be created to identify influencers and handle their needs accordingly. When Heather Armstrong goes on a rampage about your brand, someone has to act fast.

I trust you more

I’m more inclined to trust you if I see you participating in social media, especially if you’re a small business. Not being vocal in social media today is like not having a Web site a few years ago. It creates an odd lack of presence that makes me wonder where exactly you are and where you think your customers are. If you’re not reaching out to customers through online platforms, it’s a sign that maybe you just don’t care. When you hang out in social media channels, it’s an immediate trust factor because I know that if I have a problem, there’s an easy way to let you know and get a resolution. I can contact you through Twitter. I can write on your Facebook wall. And as mentioned above, I also trust that a socially-savvy company knows how important I am and is more likely to take my social influence into account when dealing with me. Egoistical? Perhaps. Welcome to the Internet.

[Of course, I also know that if you’re in social media and you DON’T pay attention to my cry for help I have a much bigger mallet to beat you with. Just something to keep in mind.]

I hear things straight from you

When you’re in social media, it means we have a direct line from one another. I get to talk to you, but you also get to talk directly to me and be your own official news source. I don’t have to question whether the rumors are true or spend time hunting down information on the Web. I can just go to your Twitter account or blog for the real deal. Are you closing down your store for renovations? Is open mic night still on for tomorrow? Does that new menu take effect this week or next? It takes all the guesswork out of our interaction and I have an official source that I can trust for up-to-date information about your brand. That’s priceless.

I become part of your story

I like being treated like a human instead a nameless person who just walked into your store. I like creating connections with people. And social media enables me to do that. Through platforms like Twitter, Facebook and online reviews, I get a sense of who you are and your core values. I learn your story and can mentally entwine myself into it. And in doing that, I’m able to reach out to you and become more than just an IP address in your system. You learn my name, we have real conversations and I get to know you on a personal level. Why is this so important for small business owners? Because you can measure charisma in dollars. You don’t have to look much further than some of today’s social media rockstars to see that. Personality will open doors talent alone never could.

I get to feel hip

Fine! Yes, it’s about me! Social media breeds visibility and visibility breeds social proof. The more you’re out there talking to people and creating relationships, the more likely I am to trust you and view you as an authority in your field. And then I want to do business with you because, as a shallow human being, it makes me feel cool to attach myself to businesses that are doing cool things.

Those are some of the reasons why I like to do business with companies actively engaging in social media. Business has always been about building trust and relationships. Social media has simply allowed us to do that on a much grander scale than ever before. It makes sense to seek out those that ‘get it’. Whether we realize it or not they instructively become ‘our favorites’ and the ones we go back to time and time again.

Let’s prevent it from hitting that stage, shall we? If you’re a business thinking it may be time to get some professional SEO help, here are nine signs that you’re ready to get involved with the process. I’m sure my SEO friends will help add on in the comments. [Constructive venting feels good. Constructive.]

You know shortcuts don’t work: You know that SEO is a long-term investment and you’re ready to put in the work. You don’t expect your three-page Web site to be able to rank competitively overnight and you’re willing to spend the time and dedicate the resources to improving it. You’ve also been around the block long enough to know that carbon-copy paid links, reporting competitors and fibbing to search engineers at conferences are NOT the way to a lasting Internet marketing campaign. Shortcuts and black magic are so five years ago. You don’t want to talk about that stuff and you know to run from vendors that do.

You want to be involved in the process: Businesses who are ready to work with a professional SEO aren’t content to just sit on the sidelines and let someone else do all the work. They want to get their hands dirty. As that fertility commercial says, once you’re ready, nine months is long enough to wait to have a baby. The same goes for SEO! Once you’ve finally committed to it, you want it all and you want to be part of it. You’re ready to get in on the meetings, you answer phone calls, you get your SEO the proper deliverables, and you’re willing to do anything you can to help you and your SEO give birth to the greatest site on the Internet!

You start educating yourself: You may have hired someone to take care of your SEO needs, but you still want to know what’s going on. You believe that being educated makes you a better client and, in turn, helps your Web site. To learn about SEO and help yourself start making education decision, you start reading trusted blogs (your SEO can probably help you ID some of these), you attend search events or conferences in your area, and you’re taking SEO training courses to get your mind up to speed. The more knowledge you can soak up to make yourself a valuable part of your SEO team, the better.

You question your SEO without second guessing: You’re actively involved in your SEO campaign. That means there will be times when you’ll wonder why your SEO is doing X instead of Y and what this Z thing is all about. Because you’re an educated client, you know enough not to simply follow someone blindly off a cliff. However, you also trust your hiring decision. You didn’t pick your SEO company randomly, instead, you did your homework and found the company that was the BEST fit for you. That means that even though you’ll sometimes need assurance, you feel comfortable trusting their expertise and don’t have to question them at every turn. As long as your vendor can clearly explain their motives, you feel safe in their arms.

You obsess over results, not rankings: You know that rankings and traffic is not the holy grail you’re looking for. With personalized search and new social factors being thrown into the mix, you’re more focused on real conversions and attracting targeted visitors than ever before. You don’t freak out when your rankings dip because as long as conversions keep increasing you know you’re moving in the right direction. You understand that while rankings can be a good benchmark, they don’t tell the whole story or dictate a successful SEO campaign. You’re interested in growing your business, not your position for vanity terms that bring absolutely no traffic. You laugh at your competitors who are.

You’re comfortable sharing: You understand that not only does SEO take teamwork but that you and your SEO are actually on the same team. To do your part and help the effort, you’re ready to give your SEO access to any and all data and information that they may need to learn more about how your site works and what is or is not helping attract visitors. If they ask you for something and you don’t have it, you’re willing to generate the information and get it to them as quickly as you can or just let them generate it themselves. Because you did your research when you hired your SEO, you feel a lot more comfortable trusting them and giving them the tools they need to do their job well. You understand that while you hold all the power in how effective your SEO campaign is, we’re kind of like your coach. The more you give us, the more we can do for you.

You take our recommendations…and implement them: You know that while we can make all the recommendations we’d like, it’s up to you to implement them. And the quicker you do so, the quicker we’re able to move forward and keep building you a great Web site (and earning you money). We all understand that some things will take longer to implement and that new team members may have to be hired or resources moved around, but you move where you can, as quickly as you can. You trust there’s a method for our madness and that we’re not just crazy. Okay, well…not totally crazy.

You’re not against writing content: You like get your hands dirty. You get that you’re more of an expert on your industry better than we ever could and you provide us with content when we ask. Sure, sometimes we’re able to tackle this for you and take it entirely off your plate, but sometimes what you do is SO specialized and SO targeted that we think it’d really be better coming from you, even if we’re going to fix it up later. You’ve been around the block a few times to know that much of your SEO efforts rely on your content so that we can use it to attract visitors, to build links, promote you, and to make your site worthy of achieving the goals we’ve set together.

You stick to the plan: You’re not one of those disappearing clients with Shiny Object Syndrome. You worked with us to put together the site’s SEO plan and you’re sticking to it. Just because you just read about a new technique on an SEO blog or someone at Google coughed conspicuously during the latest PubCon, doesn’t mean you’re running to change everything on a whim. We trust each other and we’re in it together.

The above items are things that we always try and sniff out during our initial chats with a prospective client. It helps us reduce future road blocks, but, as a business owner, it also gives you an idea of what you’re in for when you agree to a full SEO campaign.  We’re here to make your site grow up to be the best site it can be…but we still need you to help nurture it.  As we’ve said before, YOU are the most important part of your SEO campaign.

What I wanted to talk about was the importance of self promotion. Because that’s what this whole thing is really about. Some of us are loud and pro-active about spreading our content. And others view self promotion as dirty and, as a result, slow the growth of their business and get mad about it.

This weekend I’ll kick off my fifth year of SEO blogging (is it bad it feels like a gazillion?). When I look back at the posts I’ve written in that time, the ones that took off, and the different reaction that posts had based on where I published them, it’s easy to realize something. Content is not king. Your ability to promote that content is.

Does that idea bother me as a content writer?

It used to. When I worked at Bruce Clay, Inc. , I didn’t promote anything that I wrote and I think it showed. Posts didn’t get as much attention and we didn’t reach the number of people that I think we could have. I don’t think I learned the power of promotion until I met Rae. Rae is God’s gift to promotion because she GETS the importance and she can do it better than anyone. I often joke that the reason anyone knows about Outspoken Media is because Rae makes them. I’m just here putting some thoughts together and Rae forces you to pay attention. It’s a tag-team effort. Any success I’ve earned writing the blog I share equally with Rae’s ability to promote it.

I don’t feel badly about self promotion because I didn’t create the rules; I’ve just learned how to do well by them in order to help clients. And just as we tell our clients, your audience will not find you because you throw a Web site up on the Internet. For you to earn your spot and your attention, you need to be willing to promote the hell out of yourself, at least at first. Once you find your audience and your following, they’ll begin to promote your content for you. But you need to get to that point. This isn’t 8th grade English class where the teacher is going to read every essay and determine which one deserves the highest grade. This is Marketing. This is where you step in front of people to tell them your message. It’s where you subtly enter their line of sight and refuse to get out. It’s where you become their best pal in order to encourage them to buy from you down the road.

If you’re writing great content or putting out a great product and you’re NOT promoting the hell out of it, you’re an idiot. Because no one is seeing it.

Clay Shirky recently offered a rant about women and talked about our inability to self promote when compared to our male counterparts. I don’t think it’s necessarily true that girls are taught not to promote or be less aggressive than boys. That’s certainly not what I was taught. However, I do agree with Clay that reason people don’t self promote comes from fear.

• People don’t want to be seen as arrogant.
• They don’t want others to call them out.
• They don’t fully believe in their content.
• They don’t want to be wrong.
• They don’t want blog posts written about them about how they don’t actually work.

That’s a lot of changing how you act to make things less offensive for others.

Of course, there is a line. If you go in doing nothing but promoting yourself and promoting content that doesn’t deserve it, then you’re going to be shunned and ignored. The reason I don’t mind promoting Outspoken content is that I believe in it. Our calling out Seth Godin, Rae’s taking Google to task for putting spam into the index, Rhea’s incredible Online Reputation Management Guide. I will promote those any day of the week without feeling badly about it. Because they’re good pieces.

Creating good content on the Web is not enough. Maybe it was when there wasn’t as much of it competing, but today there is. What separates the Good Content that IS read from the Good Content that IS NOT is your ability to promote it. I’d go as far as to say that it’s what separates people who are successful from those that are not – their willingness to promote themselves when it is in their best interest to do so.

Promote your content, but know that you’re going to find some haters. People who will resent the fact that you’re loud about what you’re doing simply because you believe in it. People who will create fake Twitter accounts so they can “call you out” when they don’t even have the balls to put their name on it. I’d feel badly about promoting THAT. Not what I or Outspoken does.

People write about SEO cliques because they feel like their good content is getting pass on over “clique content”. You can fight about whether cliques are or are not fair OR you can learn how to promote your own content so that you ARE getting attention. Choice is yours.

[While in Los Angeles, I recorded a segment for SEM Synergy with Virginia Nussey where we touched on the importance of promoting your content (and steak quesadillas). That segment airs today at 3pmEST on WebmasterRadio.]

What follows is an online reputation management case study and some advice. Outspoken Media has no involvement with the brand, this is simply a look at SERP movement and Brownes & Co.’s reaction. If you are a small business owner, you will find actionable tips on what to do in the wake of a problem.

The Setup:

On Tabatha’s Salon Takeover, Tabatha (an incredibly talented, bleach-blonde contestant from another Bravo show, Shear Genius) finds struggling salons and “takes over” for a week. She gives the owner and their employees guidance on how to turn the business around. This involves tips on marketing, management, services and a physical makeover of the interior.

The real reason to watch, Tabatha’s a bitch! Like Simon Cowell on American Idol, we get to watch her tell it like it is. She will tell you that you are lazy, irresponsible and an asshole. It is fantastic! It is not just beat downs, people usually grow from the experience and I have cried during one episode. However, Tabatha sometimes runs into an individual who just doesn’t get it.

Meet Nikki:

Nikki Mallon, owner of Brownes & Co. in Miami, a high-end salon with a perfect location, did not get it. Nikki wired the salon with cameras and would watch her employees from her computer at home. She sent commands through instant messages to the front desk and only visited the salon once every couple of weeks. When she did come into the salon the affect was obvious, everyone was on edge and resentful and she barked orders and complaints without any positive reinforcement.

Nikki’s Audition Tape:

Tabatha vs Nikki:

The Backlash:

While watching the show, I got curious about everyone else’s reaction when one employee said they needed a death certificate to prove she was attending her grandfather’s funeral and another explained how she was told not to tell Nikki she had a child or she would be treated differently. I immediately searched Twitter and found:

Someone had already found the Facebook page, so I paid Brownes & Co. a visit. What awaited was the beginning of what would quickly evolve into hundreds of livid comments:

This was happening on Brownes & Co.’s own Facebook page! How was that possible? You only have to become a fan of a Facebook page before you can comment on it. Within hours the account, which allowed anyone to post to the wall had hundreds of new fans who only wanted to talk about how horrible Nikki was. This went on for at least twelve hours before an admin learned how to moderate comments. At one point an employee did jump into the mix, but she spoke broken English and acted defensive making the problem much worse:

The next morning, many of the Facebook comments had finally been removed and someone was now heavily moderating the page:

When I checked the search results for [brownes and co] Yelp was the only real social site ranking in the top ten, so I visited the Miami listing to see if that was taking a hit as well. It was:

It was not immediate, but Yelp did eventually get around to removing reviews from users that had not actually visited the salon. This was prompted by the Yelp community itself, which had a conversation about the show and those negative reviews. That night, Brownes & Co. had 44 reviews and two stars, today it has 23 reviews and three stars. Not much better, but at least it’s more natural.

In addition to Yelp, Facebook and Twitter, the virtual lynch mob hit sites like Citysearch and Craigslist:

The Search Results:

Watching all of this unfold was fascinating, but I was most interested in the search results. I wanted to see how things would shake out over the next 24 hours, week, month, etc. If you do a search for [brownes and co] today on Google, the suggested searches are not nearly as bad as I had projected, but the results listed for each have countless mentions of the show and Nikki:

As for the SERPs for just [brownes and co] on Google, the day of the show they looked like:

1. POSITIVE – BrownesBeauty.com
2. POSITIVE – BrownesBeauty.com/about.phtml
3. POSITIVE – MiamiBeach411.com listing
4. POSITIVE – Google Local Business listing
5. POSITIVE – Fodors.com listing
6. POSITIVE – Timeout.com listing
7. POSITIVE – Frommers.com listing
8. MIXED – Yelp.com and indent
9. POSITIVE – MiamiDesignDistrict.net and indent
10. NEGATIVE – NotforTourists.com

Those results did not change much over 24 hours and even two weeks in there were still only moderate changes. It was not until January that I really saw a change in the brand-owned and negative listings. Today’s results look like:

1. POSITIVE – BrownesBeauty.com
2. POSITIVE – BrownesBeauty.com/salon.phtml
3. MIXED – Yelp.com and indent
4. MIXED – Google Local Listing
5. POSITIVE – Facebook.com
6. NEGATIVE – BravoTV.com
7. NEGATIVE – RealityTVMagazine.SheKnows.com
8. POSITIVE – Twitter.com/BrownesBeauty
9. NEGATIVE – Boards.BravoTV.com
10. MIXED – Miami.Citysearch.com

Lessons learned:

Monitor Your Brand. Brownes & Co. was not actively monitoring or engaged with their brand when the proverbial shit hit the fan. This could not have been a surprise, Bravo teased how horrible Nikki was for more than a week! It took 24 hours before someone tried to rescue the brand. They started monitoring their social profiles, responding to complaints and posting positive mentions like upcoming sales and specials.

The brand did not publicly address Nikki’s behavior (to my knowledge), but more competent employees than the angry Yugoslavian bunny started defending the business. They took pride in their work and were thankful for a job in this economy. That was enough to calm to the flames. Monitor your brand and jump into the conversation before it escalates.

Put Your Best Face Forward. Nikki Mallon used to have a Twitter account. That’s gone now and with good reason. Whether she actually is or not, Nikki was the villain of this situation and she proved repeatedly that she did not have empathy or respect for her employees. She should never have been its voice nor gone on public television with that attitude. Separating her from the business was necessary.

It may take years to recover from the damage done by her reputation, but there are dozens of good employees that work with Brownes & Co. who can salvage the business by simply doing good work and communicating effectively with their customers. Find that special person within your business who can effectively communicate your brand and then let them shine. Thanks for making us look awesome, Lisa!

You control your properties. Brownes & Co. already owned their Facebook page and Twitter account. You could argue that owning those social profiles invited a social reaction, but I assure you they would have gotten the reaction regardless. Having already established social profiles made it easier for them to bounce back and control their brand in the long run.

Register your domain and username, optimize your social profiles and learn how to effectively manage comments and privacy settings. If you need help with the basics, the reputation management guide is a great place to start.

You do not control review sites. No matter how badly you want a review removed, it is unlikely to happen unless that review breaks the Web site’s guidelines. In the Brownes & Co. situation, users broke several Yelp guidelines (not having first hand experience, not being relevant and personal attacks), so many of those were removed. Unfortunately, if those users had actually visited the shop there would be no recourse for removal. In those situations, you need to know how to respond to complaints, as well as, how to respond to positive reviews and when to respond publicly.

Brownes & Co. learned from their experience. Regardless of the search results, their doors are still open, which is a victory in itself!

• Foreign TV Promo: Just when you thought Glee couldn’t get any more awesome, this Japanese promo surfaces and takes everything to a whole new level.  Oh yeah, it’s good.
• Separated at Birth: I feel like this comparison almost makes my obsession with Snooki from the Jersey Shore okay. And if it doesn’t, please don’t tell me. Denial is my homeboy.
• Gremlins 3 in development, set for 3D?: What do you think: Totally awesome or totally killing a classic?  You decide.
• The Ugly Truth About Getting Your Book Published: This crushes my soul a little. Seriously, will someone please offer me a book deal? I have hilarious material. I promise. I mean, you’ve SEEN my Twitter account.
• Internet Love: This takes my aforementioned crushed soul and brings it right back to life. Totally want!
• Jason Calacanis on iPad tweets: My Greatest Performance Ever?: Jason pwns the tech industry and gets CNN coverage.  It’s the greatest thing to happen all week.
• Hitler Responds to the iPad: Because, really, the only thing more ridiculous than the iPad hype this week was the idea of dear old Hitler chiming in.  Ah, that Hitler.
• Facebook is judging you:  Perhaps NSFW (barely) but…it’s Saturday. You’re not at work, right?
• Suicide is never the answer. Even to word problems:  A poignant one from The Bloggess who argues there aren’t enough misfits in the world and that we have to stick together. Who are you to argue with her?
• The scariest thing I read on the Internet this week (link now broken):  #badrolemodel [This was a link to someone saying I made them join Twitter...but it seems like they already deleted their account. Soo...all's well that ends well?]

I haven’t been able to obsessively read the Internet this week. What did I miss? I’m sure there’s some good stuff. Let me have it!

Searching for local restaurants, searching for directions, keeping up with the divisional playoffs for the NFL, communicating with friends, booking trying to book plane tickets… hell, even finding the nearest gas station (don’t worry Zane, it’s totally fine that your iPhone app took us to a diesel only station in the LA ghetto after dark that looked straight out of Boyz in the Hood on the first attempt).

Don’t get me wrong… I am constantly on my phone even when I’m not on the road, but in the last two weeks, I’ve had to absolutely rely on it and it made me realize that a lot of companies and websites need to get ready for the age of mobile.

Mobile rendering

First and foremost, there is nothing more frustrating than a website that isn’t optimized for mobile browsing. Wait, yes there is… a website that doesn’t work correctly on a mobile device [*cough* Expedia *cough*] especially when that device is a Smartphone. If you’ve yet to test how your website renders on a mobile phone, you need to start testing it with mobile emulators now. Because if your website doesn’t render properly, I’m simply going to hit the back button on my mobile browser and find one that does.

Mobile search

Is your website ready for mobile search? While most factors are typical to “normal SEO”, there are some differences in prepping your website to do well in the mobile search engines. Page size, low use of images (which your mobile users will thank you for as well), doc types and more are all said to be factors. Mobile search is still in its infancy, but the growth expectations for it especially on local searches over the next five years are large.

The Kelsey Group released new research statistics centering on mobile, specifically local and online. Kelsey’s Mobile Local Media Forecast (2008-2013) shows a 130.5% growth rate for local mobile search and an 81.2% growth for overall mobile ad revenues. – Source

Being early to the battle is one of the biggest factors in winning the war in search. You can start learning mobile search now or wait until it’s an absolute necessity and you’re behind in the learning curve to get started. I’d highly suggest choosing the former.

Mobile applications

Sure, we all know the fun applications for mobile devices. iPhone alone has tons of useless, but fun, apps being made daily for their devices. Sites like NFL.com have mobile apps that let you access football news, scores and schedules with quick and painless ease. But a lot of companies are failing to realize the potential importance (and monetization) of mobile applications as the use of mobile surfing grows.

For example, last week while I was in Vegas, I needed to book a plane ticket unexpectedly. We’ll forget for a second that the Expedia website didn’t work properly on my BlackBerry and that I had to walk 14,000 miles through the MGM to the Business Center to book the ticket as a result. My first thought was how the heck is there not an application for this? Imagine if Expedia put out a simple application for the various Smartphone devices that allowed you to not only search, but also book plane tickets online. It would make life easier for a lot of frequent travelers.

Let’s take that a step further and wonder what would happen if a Travelocity put one out first. Oh wait, they did (although, it’s only for the iPhone… big miss guys on the largest segment of Smartphone users – BlackBerry users). If I used an inferior iPhone or if they had a BlackBerry application, they’d have just converted me to being a Travelocity user. Why? Because mobile, to me, is all about convenience and not the ten dollar price difference in plane fares.

Yet another step further… what if an affiliate of Expedia built that application and then allowed it to have free downloads and ensured every sale was made through their affiliate link?

Get it? Good.

I’ve said it before… mobile is coming. You need to be accessible (mobile rendering), you need to findable (mobile search) and you need to find the angles to monetize it (mobile applications) whether you’re a company or affiliate while we’re still in the beginning stages of the game if you want to come out a winner in the end.

After my initial post I received a few emails and calls from folks looking for advice on promoting flagship pieces. They have the content and they think it has the legs to go somewhere, but now what? What do you need to make something go viral or achieve buzz? While I’ve already outlined tips on how to promote good content, I thought I’d expand on that a bit and talk about the five ingredients you absolutely need to make something go viral.

Coincidentally, they’re also the five things you need to catch a cold.  I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone and tackle both.  No extra charge.

Infectious Content (The Virus)

Everything starts with the virus.

Viral content is content that is meant to be talked about. It’s something that is compelling enough to deserve attention and to make people want to spread it. There’s no magic formula for knowing what will or will not take off, but there are generally accepted truths:

• People are incredibly narcissistic. Playing to ego works.
• We want to be entertained. At all times.
• We also like being shocked…from the safety of our homes.
• Mashing up things we already love is doubly funny.
• We’re suckers for compelling stories.

Ultimately, in order to create buzz you have to find a way to ‘wow’ someone. However, do remember that ‘wowing’ doesn’t mean ‘offending’. To get someone to pass something on they first have to be willing to let people know they were looking at it. Cross the offensive line and they may not be willing to do that. You know what I’m talking about.

The Talkers (The Vector)

The vector is the infectious agent that transmits the virus. Without it, the virus will die. Said more simply, people are dirty and spread diseases. [go wash your hands]

Your infectious agent is your audience. It is the people that you want to see and pass on your content, they’re not necessarily customers. Your customers may love you, but they may not be inclined to talk about you. For example, do you tweet about the restaurant you go to every week or do you tweet about the new place you’re excited to have just found? Usually the latter. Just because someone buys from you doesn’t mean they’re in the position to talk about you. And just because they’d never by from you doesn’t meant that they wouldn’t talk about you.

When you’re mapping out who you’re going to share your content with, cast the net a little wider than just your core audience. Look for the folks with the biggest egos most prone to sharing content and the people with the biggest spheres of influence. Those are your talkers and the people you need to help build visibility and keep spreading your virus.

Social Incentives (Replication Cycle)

Every virus has a unique replication cycle that affects how quickly it can grow and spread. The stronger the virus, the faster it can potentially infect other people.

FourSquare spread through the Web quicker than mono through a middle school because they gave people stuff for participating and everyone got overly excited. Participate and you get badges! You get to call yourself a Mayor! You get punched in the face when you won’t stop infecting my Twitter stream with germs and I finally go ballistic! On Twitter it’s the same deal with our Follower and Lists displayed prominently. On Facebook we alert the whole word that we just wasted 30 minutes of our live playing Farmville of Café World or whatever the emo kids are playing these days. These sites offer a social incentive for getting involved and helping the virus to spread.

Robert Scoble had a post on how to build an addictive app that covers this same idea that you should absolutely read. The plan he outlines works for tying social incentive to apps can be modified to make anything addictive. Read that post because he nails it.

Tools To Spread (Method of Transmission)

Different viruses are spread differently. They’re ingested, they’re passed through blood, they require contact, etc. The way that they’re transmitted and how quickly they’re passed is dependent on the type of virus being spread, how it’s built, and how it’s engineered to pass from vector to vector.

You need to know how your virus will be most quickly spread and then facilitate that as much as possible. That may mean linking your post up to Twitter for easy tweeting, it may mean making it easy to share on Facebook, it may mean getting blogged by a particular influencer or putting an Email This button at the bottom of the post. It’s up to you to know how to find your people and break down obstacles to promote maximum spread.

Don’t forget that YOU are an important part of the transmission process. The same way you pass that sore throat off to your significant other, you need to help pass your content on, as well. Get into the conversation and interact with people in order to fan the infection and help it to spread further. Talk about the content in your network, pass it to your friends, respond to comments or reactions being left, and let people know that you’re part of what’s being passed and that you’re listening. No one likes playing with a wall. Show them you’re there to push back.

A Way To Study Behavior (The Doctor)

As the viral spreads, a doctor is called in to check your overall health, monitor the rate of infection and to measure the overall effect it has had on the body.

You need to appoint a doctor for all of your social campaigns. Someone who will be responsible for tying metrics to actions and following the course of the virus. Creating the original social media plan is a great first step, but you need to set goals to help you measure your community and monitor social media metrics. That’s where your social media ROI is going to come from.

There’s a lot of info that can be gleaned from simply watching how people interact with your content and the types of things they share. Chris Bennett already wrote a killer post on 5 Must Do’s After a Successful Viral Marketing Campaign so I won’t repeat it, but read that post for a list of things to analyze AFTER the campaign finishes. We often talk about the importance of measuring things like links, comments, retweets, traffic, etc, as a way to measure campaigns, but Chris looks at things most people often forget. I particularly like the Analysis and Rolodex mentions.

There’s no ‘perfect science’ for making something go viral or achieve a world of buzz, however, there are ways to better your odds. It’s as easy as catching a cold.